Myanmese refugees made to pay US$1,000 to stay in Malaysia

Refugees and asylum seekers from Myanmar are paying up to US$1,000 for UNHCR cards granting them official refugee status in Malaysia, an Al-Jazeera investigation has found.

Officials have been recorded openly describing themselves as "thieves" for brokering the illegal trade of registration documents.

"All the money from this activity goes into the pockets of some top guys in the UN," a UN translator claimed in Al-Jazeera's current affairs programme 101 East. "We have been doing this … for a long time. We are thieves, and we look for thieves above us."

Presenter Steve Chao posed as a priest in order to visit squalid detention centres in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, where he interviewed dozens of refugees and asylum seekers, some of them Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, for Malaysia's Unwanted, which aired last week.

Interviewees said they faced police harassment and exploitation, were barred from work or sending their children to school, and lived in abysmal conditions: some refugees were beaten, chained, handcuffed, and had not been fed for days.

Some 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers live in Malaysia - nearly all from Myanmar - but because Malaysia is not party to the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 protocol recognising refugees, they are vulnerable to abuse and foul play by authorities, rights groups say.